In the lunar new year’s holidays, I take part in an exhibition of Tibetan Buddism. In this exibition I learnt that Tibet was called Tubo in Tang Dynasty, it was named Dbusgtsang in Ming Dynasty, we didn’t call in Tibet until the Qing Dynasty. During the Tang Dynasty, Tibet and China became friendly allies several times. In Yuan Dynasty, Tibet was formally controlled by the central government. During the Ming and Qing Dynasty, different groups of Tibetan Buddism were strongly supported by the central government and were developing swiftly. Tibetan chanceller was formally set in Qing Dynasty, and the two systems of Living Buddha reincarnation, Dalai and Panchen, were also created during this period of time. In the process of frequent contacts, the central government of all these dynasties gave Tibetan religious leaders seals, golden edicts and all kind of gifts which were symbols of power. And Tibetan religious leaders also made great contribution to the mutual culture exchanges.

Buddhist sutras were mainly statements and actions records of Shakyamuni propagandizing Buddism. During 5th century B.C., after the death of Shakyamuni, in order to promote his theory, followers held several big discussions about Buddism’s original books. In the 7th century, Tibet sent pupils to India, bringing back tons of Sanskrit classics. On the basis of these classics, they began their translation work. Besides the translation of the Sanskrit classics, the monks in Tibet left lots of notes, dogmas and historical works about Buddism.

In the year of 2008, before the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics, I stayed in a youth hostel in Beijing. At the hostel, I met a guy from Tibet. His name was Luo Zang. He sold Cordyceps sinensis for a living. I chat with him at night in the hostel. He could speak a little bit Chinese, but he know Tietan quite well. He can type tibetan word on computers. His dream is to learn Chinese well and type Chinese words on computers. He told me what is the thing that travel fastest. I told him that it’s light. But he told me the answer was heart. According to Buddist theory, thoughts travel even faster than light, if you thought about something, your heart reached the place of the object instantly.

Bodhisattva means the enlightened sentient being, the upward objective of Bodhisattvas is to get complete consciousness, the downward objective of them is to aid the world and to save the people. In Mahayana, the position of Bodhisattvas is the 2nd highest under Buddha. Their job is to help the Buddha teach the people, they would became Buddha in the end. Bodhisattvas drop to the earth in all kinds of shapes, saving the people from misery and making people feel extremely cordial. As the highest Buddha has the sense of mystique, which makes people hard to maintain intimate relationships with him. Bodhisattvas can do the job for him. The statues of Bodhisattvas hold large proportion in Tibetan Buddism art, among them, the number of statues of Avalokitesvara and Manjushri is the greatest.(The end)

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